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155. tardigrade

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I am tired.

It’s been over a month since my last update here, and not for a lack of anything to write about or say. On the contrary. There’s almost too much to say. So many thoughts charging about like metaphorical bulls in the proverbial china shoppe, but so little time and energy to actually sit down and give them air.

This marriage amendment campaign is exhausting me. I’m so tired of this fight, of viewing every interaction as a potential battle with some fundamentalist Christian who is either trying to save my soul or convince me that I’m a disgusting faggot. The divisiveness is killing me emotionally, and the fact that it’s put me at odds with basically my entire old social network is wearing on me psychologically. There are so many old friends who don’t talk to me anymore, either because I’m gay or an atheist. There aren’t even really words to express how sad I am over this reality, and angry that many of the people I once counted close (or as close as I let anyone in college get) don’t think that I’m deserving of equal recognition, either legally or socially.

Then there’s the social apocalypse still resulting from the fallout from my birthday almost two years ago. There was the social network from my youth group at church that fell apart when I went to college, and the social network at my church that fell apart when I left that church in 2007 after basically growing up there. There was the close social network that formed in college that lasted for a few years after graduation, and that continued and grew during my time working in the theater department there. There was the little commune that was the apartment and then townhouse I shared with some of my best friends, but they’ve all moved on, marriages and life and such.

There was the community that grew up amongst some friends over several years that seemed like it might blossom into something, later coupled with the hope of a romantic attachment that went devastatingly wrong. For me, that community fell apart when the chasm between he and I drove me into self-imposed exile. I hear through various channels that people miss me, but it’s too painful to go back and try to navigate that labyrinth. So old friendships have splintered and dissolved as necessary boundaries were forged and lines drawn in the sand. In my absence they’ve all only grown closer. In the process I lost one of my best friends earlier this year, but there’s nothing to be done about that or any of the other relationships that have become casualties of this hurricane of change. So now I find myself in the midst of the ashes of a massive forest fire, having lost basically my entire community and feeling incredibly alone.

I have a terrific, caring and supportive boyfriend, and his family has more or less adopted me. But it doesn’t quite make up for the loss of my home, of my family, of close friends. I am finally seeing a therapist to deal with the past, and understanding that this is all part of the grief process—a process I’ve been avoiding for some time.